Effective vaccines against severe infectious diseases such as AIDS, hemorrhagic fevers, or malaria require novel vaccination strategies because the traditional technologies are not effective or safe. One attractive technology encompasses the insertion of gene segments encoding immunogenic parts of pathogens into a “vehicle” called a vector. This vector, when administered to a patient, produces the immunogenic fragments of the pathogen, which is then presented to the host’s immune system thereby inducing the required response to prevent infection or treat disease. To date the vectors that are best suited for the task of “vehicle” belong to the adenovirus family.

Crucell has generated a series of adenoviruses including Ad11, Ad35, and Ad49 and derivatives thereof as well as manufacturing platforms for these vectors. The AdVac^® vectors can be produced to carry genetic information derived from viruses, parasites and bacteria thereby allowing immunization against life-threatening diseases such as AIDS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, malaria and anthrax.

Crucell has developed a plasmid system that allows easy insertion of heterologous genes into the adenovirus serotype 11, 35 or 49 backbones. These plasmids, called pAdApt™/11, pAdApt™/35, or pAdApt™/49 together with relevant information regarding the restriction sites, are available upon request. Additionally, Crucell offers a routine in-house program to generate and produce small-scale vector batches for research purposes. The delivery of a purified vector research batch takes about 4 months from start to finish.

Crucell has been a key player in the development of adenoviral-based vaccines for more than 5 years, resulting in the availability of proprietary AdVac^® vectors. Crucell has generated a wide variety of research and GMP clinical batches based on AdVac^® technology for diverse disease fields including infectious diseases.

Currently AdVac^® technology is used by Crucell and its licensees to develop vaccines against hemorrhagic fever (Ebola, Lassa, Marburg), malaria (Plasmodium falciparum), tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), AIDS (HIV) and hepatitis C (HCV).